In September the recalcitrants came before the King at Stirling. All professed to be convinced (one, after inquiries in Fife), except Bruce. We learn what happened next from a letter of his to his wife. He had heard from one who had been at Craigengelt’s execution (August 23), that Craigengelt had then confessed that Henderson had told him how he was placed by Gowrie in the turret. {103} Bruce had sent to verify this. Moreover he would believe, if Henderson were hanged, and adhered to his deposition to the last: a pretty experiment! The Comptroller asked, ‘Will you believe a condemned man better than the King and Council?’ Mr. Bruce admitted that such was his theory of the Grammar of Assent. ‘If Henderson die penitently I will trust him.’ Later, as we shall see, this pleasing experiment was tried in another case, but, though the witness died penitently, and clinging to his final deposition, not one of the godly sceptics was convinced. ‘But Henderson saved the King’s life,’ replied the Comptroller to Mr. Bruce. ‘As to that I cannot tell,’ said Mr. Bruce, and added that, if Henderson took the dagger from Ruthven, he deserved to die for not sheathing it in Ruthven’s breast. Henderson later, we know, withdrew his talk of his seizure of the dagger, which James had never admitted. James now said that he knew not what became of the dagger. ‘Suppose,’ said the Comptroller, ‘Henderson goes back from that deposition?’ ‘Then his testimony is the worse,’ said Mr. Bruce. ‘Then it were better to keep him alive,’ said the Comptroller; but Mr. Bruce insisted that Henderson would serve James best by dying penitently. James said that Bruce made him out a murderer. ‘If I would have taken their lives, I had causes enough’ (his meaning is unknown), ‘I need not have hazarded myself so.’ By the ‘causes,’ can James have meant Gowrie’s attempts to entangle him in negotiations with the Pope? {104} These were alleged by Mr. Galloway, in a sermon preached on August 11, in the open air, before the King and the populace of Edinburgh (see _infra_, p. 128). Mar wondered that Bruce would not trust men who (like himself) heard the King cry, and saw the hand at his throat. Mr. Bruce said that Mar might believe, ‘as he were there to hear and see.’